Kip Lee
Forty years selling home improvement. Two trips onto the Inc. 500. Now he designs the systems that hold a business accountable.
An architect doesn't carry a pipe wrench. He's the one who knows where every pipe goes — because he's the one who drew the building. Kip Lee spent four decades inside home improvement companies: selling at the kitchen table, running the crews, signing the checks, and learning the hard way where the money actually leaks. Today he designs AI-driven accountability systems that do what no report ever did for him — tell the owner the truth about his own business.
The book
Every owner runs his company on beliefs — which product prints money, who the best salesman is, which lead source is worth funding. Most were true once. Some never were. This book is the exam: 48 questions, your own books, and the gap between what you believe and what your numbers actually say.
No marketer has ever asked you these questions. Most of them can't afford your answers.
It's yours.
Chapter One is ready right now — and you'll hear from Kip when the full book lands.
Download Chapter One (PDF)Before the questions, there was the life: forty years of kitchen tables, crews, showrooms, mentors, and the small world of home improvement where the same names keep showing up at the same conferences for decades. A porch read about the people and the scar tissue behind everything on this page.
"Never a captor, always a vendor. Volume for vanity. Profit for sanity."
The operator behind the architect
Kip built one of the largest Four Seasons Sunrooms dealerships in the country — top five nationally for four straight years, #1 in the Southeast.
- Inc. 500 — twice
- Qualified Remodeler Top 500 — five straight years
- Michael C. Bunn Award — SBAC Small Business of the Year (Small Business Assistance Corporation, 2003)
- Over 10,000 kitchen tables
- Cover feature, Replacement Contractor magazine
He didn't study the industry. He was the industry. The systems he designs now — and the questions in the book — come from the same place: decades of finding out, the expensive way, what the numbers don't volunteer.
The receipts
This book argues that "stated" and "verified" are two different things. So the bio doesn't get to be stated either. Here's the third-party paper.
The cover feature
Cover story on Coastal Empire Exteriors by Jim Cory — the trade press documenting the run while it was happening, not remembering it afterward.
No. 212 on America's fastest-growing companies
576.5% three-year growth. The only local company on the list that year. This is the actual supplier congratulations piece that hung in the showroom — Inc.'s own listing snapshot on it.
Five straight years, published
The QR Top 500 lists documented the whole arc as it happened: #289 → #246 → #168 → #146 → #159, revenue $3.1M → $6.98M, jobs 250 → 561 a year. Archived copies are permanent on the Internet Archive:
"Cross Sell Sunrooms and Windows" — Jim Cory
"Point of Pride" — the sunroom tours
The tour program the trade press wrote up: 10–12 tours generating roughly $3 million in sales, 40% of attendees setting sales appointments.
"Should I Star In My Own Ads?"
The marketing architect behind the 2003–2007 run, writing about the campaign years later. Kip's TV commercials still run as samples on Level 10's services pages.
Talks — AI and contracting
Kip speaks on the collision of the two worlds he knows first-hand: forty years of running home improvement companies, and the AI systems he now designs for them. No futurist hand-waving — an operator explaining to operators what the technology actually does, what it can't do, and where the money is.
What AI Actually Does for a Contractor
Past the buzzwords: which jobs in your building AI can genuinely hold — the phones, the follow-up, the accountability — and which parts still belong to people. What it costs, what it returns, and the questions to ask any vendor before you sign.
The Numbers Your Sales Board Hides
The book, live: gross profit per crew-day, net sales per lead issued, and the gap between what an owner believes and what his books say. Bring your numbers — leave your feelings at home.
Accountability Without the Asshole Tax
The biggest enemy of a small business is the absence of accountability — because the person enforcing it becomes the bad guy. How AI carries the social cost of enforcement so the owner doesn't have to.
Available for podcasts and expert commentary — translating AI to the average contractor, in plain language, from someone who's run the trucks and built the software.
Keynotes · association meetings · dealer events · podcasts · press commentary
Speaking & media inquiriesOr call (912) 401-4772
Work with Kip
An honest observation. A real working plan based on your numbers and your business. And the software discipline to follow through when everybody else has left the building. That last one is what no other consultant gives you. A consultant hands you a binder and wishes you luck — the follow-through was always your problem. Kip builds the system that runs the plan after he leaves the room: the phones answered, the leads worked, the numbers watched, the team held to it.
The Observation
48 questions and your own books. One meeting. Belief next to reality, sorted by the size of the miss.
The plan
A real working plan based on your numbers and your business — not a template. Which lines to feed, which to fix, which to walk away from, and what it's worth in dollars.
The follow-through
The software discipline that executes the plan every day, when everybody else has left the building — so it doesn't die in the binder the way every consultant's plan you've ever bought did.
It starts with the Observation.
$1,500
Credited in full toward your first engagement. Never waived — free diagnoses are worth what they cost.
Request the Observation